


Appetite

by dragonsong (NekoAisu)



Series: FFXIV Write 2019 [14]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Dehumanization, Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood, Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood Spoilers, Implied/Referenced Prostitution, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-29 00:51:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20787860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NekoAisu/pseuds/dragonsong
Summary: “Were it not for your convenience as a living servant to Garlemald, I would have slaughtered you for that utterance alone.”





	Appetite

**Author's Note:**

> For FFXIVWrite 2019!
> 
> Day 15 | Free Day
> 
> Tumblr post here: https://ffxivimagines.tumblr.com/post/187759841919/ffxivwrite-2019-prompt-15-appetite

Zenos yae Galvus is a man of little patience. He has time to spare and no wish to waste it on savages and their foolish machinations. He named Yotsuyu goe Brutus as viceroy in his stead solely for the respite it granted him—with which he gladly rejoined the hunt and struck down foe after foe, each more thrilling than the last—and yet here he is! Surrounded by gaudy opulence and tittering, made-up courtesans! How absolutely _dreadful._

Unfortunately, sitting in a red parlor with the smell of fermented tea leaves filling his helm is a requirement of his retention of stewardship. He does, indeed, sit. He does, indeed, wait. Yotsuyu shows up late and moderately unapologetic with yet _another_ foreign flower in tow as if he would be best served by some uncultured savages. He very forcefully shoves his hatred to the wayside the moment they open their mouth to greet him. 

“This one greets His Imperial Highness.”

The warrior he faced in months period had far more spine than the sniveling, scraping ornament bowing before him. They were a stunning little creature with a sharp tongue and vicious ferality. Zenos sighs and does not ignore the shiver that thrills down the courtesan’s back at the sound. They’re _pathetic._ A broken and boring item. They are just another savage with a spine made of paper. Nothing new. Nothing _interesting. _

Yotsuyu sits down and works through the usual pleasantries and provides reports of the exports from within Yanxia. There are papers including expenses and expenditures for each outpost and encampment, but nothing of a new courtesan. 

“And the import expenses?” 

“Taken care of,” she replies with a leisurely wave of her hand. “If that is all you’ll have of me, I will take my leave. Orchid can stay if you’d like company.”

Zenos regards the courtesan for barely half a moment before speaking. He does his best to be civil, _truly, _but it does not always come out as such. “I am not your petsitter, Viceroy.”

“Of course not, my lord,” she agrees easily, “but you are a visitor to the garden. Orchid is familiar with your type.”

Zenos ignores her, stands, and leaves the pavilion one slow, deliberate step at a time. “Were it not for your convenience as a living servant to Garlemald, I would have slaughtered you for that utterance _alone.”_

Yotsuyu apologizes with sincerely insincere platitudes. He does not listen to any of them, striding toward the barracks with purpose. He may find some sport there, at the least.

Orchid is too giving. Too _soft._ Zenos would like to cleave them in half for even so much as playing at being worthy prey. They are pretty and well pedigreed, not an ounce of bloodlust to be seen, like some sort of ornamental sheepdog. They could be some sort of proxy with which to get rid of the itching that’d been building in his bones since the raid on the Reach.

But they are still not his beast. 

Three hours later, thoroughly blood-covered and bored, Zenos begins to regret his faith in the supposedly unbreakable Doman spirit. Even without armor on and only one blade at his side, he is simply too much for the footsoldiers and their cowardly commanders. How disappointing. 

He would prefer to raze each and every member of the east barracks’s XXCII squadron to the ground and allow dogs to feast upon their bodies than allow them to keep their rank and uniform. They were savages playing at worth and culture. Nothing more, nothing less. It would be a mercy for him to kill them where they stand than allow them the terror of choosing a death. 

Yotsuyu always was better at that than he.

He flicks viscera from his blade and sheaths it with ease. The new one he had taken from some swordsmith is well made. A shame it’s of less-than-worthy origins. He’d quite like to use it for ceremonial battle instead of the blunted claymore so commonly seen at commencement speeches and duels for the crown. There is no fun when he can only hope one dull _thunk_ is enough to fell an opponent. All his challengers should bow at his feet (just like that courtesan) and defer to his judgement (with a downcast gaze barely hiding their fear). _Ah,_ to behold that ridiculous, feral fury he had once faced. That adventurer had been weak, a feast for his blade but not his mind, and yet nearly every waking moment is consumed by how long they had lasted against the strikes constantly leveraged against their fragile might.

Thinking back at it, the adventurer could heal. It’s not so uncommon a skill that he likened all who could practice healing arts to that of his past opponent, but just uncanny enough that he wonders if Orchid can do it too. It feels like a slippery slope to be looking for a subpar partner in someone so obviously broken in. One moment he’ll be striving for someone who can challenge him and he next he’d be soft and soothed by a courtesan’s touch.

He knows the law of beasts—that they who fight and _win_ are those worthy of the spoils—and wonders if there is any of that greed left within Yotsuyu’s new pet that he could coax out from within them with blade and blood. He tries it, anyway. They flee. 

He tries again. And again. And_ again. _Each and every time they run from him, a blur of respendence and terror. He wonders if it’s an invitation to chase more than it is an attempt to get him to give up on seeing them fight. 

He knows how the rumors warp at the sight of them tearing through the entirety of Doma Castle. Garlemald’s Mad Prince, the heir who gives Varis such worry, courting a flower of Yotsuyu’s own design. It would be unheard of, had the servants and soldiery not known of Zenos’s uniqueness already. As it is, the rumor is distributed, Zenos fills his time with the sight of a heaving chest and flushed face, and Orchid very nearly faints from fight a few dozen times in the span of a week. 

They continue their cycle like it’s a rehearsal; Zenos chases them, always catching with a steel grip on their arm, neck, side, ankle, whatever he can close a hand around and leverage to knock them to the ground before him. But, like always, the moment he has them, the fight drains from every ilm of their body. 

_(“A conditioned response,” Yotsuyu told him, when he asked. “Requisite for their work.”)_

Zenos hates it. Hates them. He wants a fight in any form he can have it, but all he gets is the vision they make with reddened cheeks and disheveled robes. He decides to try one more time. Just one. 

“Entertain me, little beast,” he orders. “Prove your worth.”

And they run from him like they have before, but there’s somehow an edge to it─desperation morphing to hunger at the sight of them disappearing around a bend, the sound of their heartbeat syncing with the pulse of his Resonant, how they struggle for breath beneath him when his hand closes sharply about their throat. He wants them solely for the rush they grant him, paltry as it may be, and he wonders if this is what Yotsuyu meant when she said they were familiar with his type. To drive him so out of his mind with so little effort. What incredible skill they yet hide from him. 

When he catches them, it’s with the entirety of his body. They tumble to the earth together, intertwined, and he has a revelation. He wants _this,_ the closeness that comes with finally capturing his prey, and maybe something more. Not with Orchid, but very possibly with his beast. 

Only his beast is worthy of such trust and affection as to be pressed closely to his chest─to his _heart_─and he craves the taste of their skin so acutely it burns. He stares at Orchid, the fainting and fragile beauty Yotsuyu had seen fit to give him as a placeholder, and sighs.

He would need to find his beast soon. He could subsist off of a dream for only so long. 

**Author's Note:**

> back at it again w the badly done zenos fic ;3c
> 
> ((this is a snippet from a longfic i've been working on throughout FFXIVWrite that'll be posted throughout October!))
> 
> xiv tunglr | https://ffxivimagines.tumblr.com/  
main | https://kiriami-sama.tumblr.com/  
main | https://twitter.com/flamingacekiri


End file.
